A cloud is more than just coalesced water vapor. If it were then fog, mist and steam would all be considered a cloud. In truth, some definitions do say exactly that. However, we communicate most effectively when words have clear and distinct meanings. If I were to ask you to visualize a cloud, you would think of the puffs of grandeur in the sky. No matter what you think of in addition, that image would be invoked. Even if you are unsure of the context, that image would be amongst the most likely possibilities. Sky clouds, as envisioned, do require water vapor but they also require air, space, pressure and light to form that common image.

What's the point? The point is that the word, 'cloud', has a commonly understood meaning, regardless of the technical or scientific details that can make that specific meaning less exclusive. No one is served by making the definition more ambiguous. Similarly, the description and components of cloud computing should not be watered down to allow every conceivable enterprise feature or outcome.

Cloud computing is a way to maximize capacity and utilization and to minimize space, maintenance and to simplify governance. It offers these benefits by employing virtualization concepts and capitalizing on the emergence of patterns in enterprise topologies.

Virtualization is not a cloud solution, but a cloud solution will require virtualization in some form, whether it be cloning or full virtual images. Similarly, parallel processing on pooled resources is not a cloud but the principles of that are important to the conception of an effective cloud. However, a cloud also requires understanding of the enterprise, a clear picture of patterns and topologies and an efficient process for managing images as distinct entities. In other words, it's not just water vapor.

Cloud computing is the product of the evolution of networks and enterprises. It requires many things that have existed for years but only now have developed to the point where we can achieve the power and flexibility that cloud computing offers. Weighing down the grandeur of the cloud concept by overemphasizing some constituent part or by understating the importance of its management and governance serves no one except for the few trying to get a free ride in the sky.

I recently read a post by David Linthicum in which he proposes that a key benefit of cloud computing is the ability to transfer risk from the enterprise to the cloud provider.

At first glance, this seems an obvious benefit of using a public cloud for computing resources. Cloud providers take care of the onerous task of providing computing resources across an organization. If the resources need to be updated, require critical maintenance, or need emergency action, the cloud provider will provide those services. Enterprise IT departments are left to devote effort toward delivering technological capabilities to the business. However, does any of this imply a transfer of risk?

I'd answer that question with "It depends." Whether or not an enterprise has transferred risk by contracting with a public cloud provider depends on the provisions in the Service Level Agreement (SLA) that exists between the enterprise and provider. In some cases (maybe most) the SLA simply provides a refund for a portion of the service fee based on the impacted services. This is clearly not a case of transference of risk. The loss of current and new business sustained by the enterprise during the service outage is not indemnified by the cloud provider. In this sense, the enterprise has done nothing more than transfer the management of their risks to a third party.

True risk transference can be achieved, but it means that SLAs provide both service fee refunds and business loss indemnification. During a service outage, an enterprise's risk is not the fee they are paying for the service but instead the impact on current and future profits. There must be stipulations in the SLAs to address these losses for risk transfer to have taken place.

The differences between transferring risk and risk management may seem obvious, but it does serve to underscore the importance of SLAs in the cloud computing world. Enterprises need to fully understand these SLAs in order to accurately assess the benefits of using a cloud proider. SLAs are poised to be critical in the cloud computing world, and I'm interested to see how they will help shape the competitive landscape of the industry.

For those of you basically familiar with IBM Workload Deployer, you are likely aware that the appliance has many different capabilities. On the surface it is a cloud management device for middleware and middleware applications. Of course, there are quite a few details that are important to understanding the functionality provided, and I spend quite a bit of my time talking with various users and potential users about these details. One thing I have noticed that can become an obstacle in having effective communication regarding IBM Workload Deployer is the lack of a commonly understood language. I sometimes find that me and the user are simply using different terminology to describe the same thing. As you can imagine, this just serves to create confusion, and neither party gets the most out of the conversation.

In order to combat this communication gap, I thought I would put together a simple presentation that introduces and defines IBM Workload Deployer terminology. Check it out below (you can also download it here):

While the presentation does not dive deep into the terms it introduces, it does provide a basic definition and illustrative example of each. My hope is that this fosters an understanding of some of the basic concepts in IBM Workload Deployer, and ultimately pushes us towards a common vernacular. Please let me know what you think!

If you work in a development shop similar to mine, you and many of your coworkers have more than one workstation under your desk.We use those extra machines for a variety of reasons but by and large they they tend to serve most often as foot warmers. That is not to say that they are unnecessary but rather they simply aren't used most of the time. If you try to eliminate one, you will surely need it within the next week but if your manager asks if it is really necessary you would be hard pressed to pinpoint precisely when the last time it was used for something really important. To developers, these extra machines are potential sandboxes for isolated experiments or testing scenarios. For managers, they are relatively unused capital investments that require inventory control and have depreciating value.If you are a network administrator there are certainly computers in your inventory that are older and lack the capacity to be counted on for everyday use. They sit in a corner or in a blade rack and are probably idle or even powered off. These assets take up physical space and contribute very little to your data center. However, they have little sale value but may represent a significant investment. Or maybe you just can't part with them for sentimental reasons.

Whatever the reasons for having computing resources lying around that are seldom used, here is an idea: Virtualization. With virtualized images you can use those machines for whatever purposes are required and for as long as they are required without having to spend hours loading them with a compliant OS image, installing software and configuring them for use. Virtual image libraries could hold preinstalled systems for almost any need. It could be for anything:

Workstations provisioned for temporary workers

More server capacity

More machines or load testing

Extra processors for parallel processing systems

Back up systems to carry loads during maintenance hours

If you use WebSphere in any capacity, CloudBurst can be used to lay in place a completely functioning WebSphere install in as little as 20 minutes, OS and all.

When the need for the machine is passed, it can be un-deployed and returned to the pool. This could significantly increase the available computing power of an entire development business. The ability to turn any machine into a needed and useful system on demand is real agile computing and gives a whole new dimension to governance.

Dustin and i manned the IBM booth at InterOp in Las Vegas last week. The conference was very different from the industry conferences I remember, but then again I haven't been to one in a long time. I don't recall seeing boxing matches, light shows or bikini models but I think they are a welcome addition.

Ostensibly this conference was focused on cloud computing and was even called the "Cloud Summit". However, in the vendor area, there were few real cloud computing specific peds. Most of the vendor displays were about hardware, system monitoring and security.

Ric Telford of IBM gave a keynote address and sspoke of IBM's cloud offerings. After the keynote, there was a flurry of visitors asking about IBM, Cloud Computing and IBM's cloud offerings. Most of the visitors were looking for education and we were happy to have the opportunity to talk about the company and cloud computing from IBM's perspective.

We had the CloudBurst Appliance with us and it drew some interest. The purple case definitely stood out and drew inquiries. Some excitement is being generated but I think now the industry and the market has to catch up to us.

Cloud Computing is essentially a Systems Management innovation. I understand that, to some, that means simply managing hardware and capacity or computing power. However, it also involves deployment of enterprise level software. While some software is a kind of out-of-the-box asset that can be installed generically as if it were a hard asset, infrastructure software like WebSphere requires considerable skill and knowledge.

Tier1 cloud computing implementations must be able to expand the enterprise into provided capacity quickly and autonomically. If the scale-out requires tremendous effort and specialized skills then the cost savings that cloud offers is severely mitigated.

CloudBurst provides a mechanism to quickly deploy WebSphere environments to private clouds and allows the administrator to simply manage the assets on which WebSphere will run. The expertise of setting up and configuring WebSphere is, in effect, canned. This allows for much more rapid deployments and reduces the need for more expensive admins.

While many companies are still putting forward more technologically sophisticated offerings that still require even more technologically sophisticated staff, WebSphere has produced a product with a value which is more easily realized, understood and which can be seen on the balance sheet.

Can you have cloud computing without virtualization? I don't think so. Some have stated to me that they believe a cloud could b contrived without virtualization but I don't see it. Cloud computing is all about being able to expand or contract an enterprise on demand and as a service. Without deployable virtual images there is no mechanism for doing this efficiently.

I suppose that you could argue that clouds do not necessarily include the OS or the hardware and that you could scale by use of templates and configuration files to clone systems. That is cloning. Cloning, spawning, parallel processing and other mechanisms for creating capacity and processing power dont have the scope that a full cloud implementation has. Cloud computing is an administration paradigm that may share or even employ some or all of these other techniques but can include more.

I guess the biggest thing that sets cloud computing apart from cloining or spawning is that cloud computing is a paradigm for a flexible distributed computing platform. Cloning and spawing are techniques as is Virtualization.Clouds are entire managed infrastructures where virtulized systems are simply tools and cloning is a function of products.

Dustin and I have been seeingweb sites pop up all over the place with the word 'Cloud' in the name.Everything from web based remote PC services to elastic Web Mail.

I remember in 2000when Business to Business Integration (B2Bi) was the big market buzzword. Every company in the industry was claiming to be "The B2Bicompany". B2Bi was and is not an easy task. Everyone uses and storesdata differently; sometimes even within the same company. So whathappened? Most companies could not deliver products that made the jobeasier in a more generic way and it fell to services based companies.The expense soared and the results were generally poor. XML was justgaining prominence and few "B2Bi companies" ever even heard of EDI (Electronic Data Interchange. It was how businesses shared data before the internet became so capable). Thenet result ended up being that to succeed these providers had to scaleback their claims and muddy the definition of B2Bi. Now you hardly everhear it. The need still exists and the market is robust but the buzzword faded from the lexicon.

Cloud Computing is a powerful concept and the term can encompass many different implementations that achieve Dynamic Infrastructure, On Demand Capacity and Virtualized Enterprises. However, tagging glorified remote desktops and pay-for-GB mail boxes as cloud computing will do nothing but obscure the definition, allow charlatans to deliver poor or incomplete solutions and make it more difficult to convey the value of products and services that support true clouds.

Real cloud providers should be diligent in detailing their services and the value they provide. If the smoke is cleared, the view of the clouds will remain breathtaking.

At the core of cloud computing discussions and cloud computing in general is the idea of virtualization. The word 'virtualization' might invoke different things depending on who you talk to but for cloud discussions many people think of virtual images: entire systems being stored even down to the operating systems. The advantages seem evident. Instead of complex deployment models you simply need to take an unused piece of hardware resource and lay in the exact pattern. The assumption is that the hardware is free an compatible but everything else is negotiable. I think, however that there are different levels of assumption within the cloud concept. Laying in entire systems from the OS up may be way more work than is necessary. The advantage is that there are fewer constraints on what kinds of things you can depoy in your cloud. But one of the big disadvantages are that there are fewer constraints on what kinds of things you can depoy in your cloud. Sometimes, productivity is higher when your developers are given the topology parameters and when he knows what resources are going to be available. In fact, the concept of cloud seems to infer that there are fewer assumptions needed so you will have maximum versatility. However, flexibility is an antagonist to stability and stability is needed for prodcutivity. In effect, more assumptions necessarily equals faster developement and quicker time to release. So is cloud the antithesis of productivity? No, of course not. The beauty of clouds is that you can have as many assumptions as you want. A productive cloud model could assume specific hardware, OS and even webservers and macro-topologies. The cloud's resources could simply be avalable platforms that serve as quickly added nodes that can be dynamically provisioned within an appserver deployment. I think cloud models can be stratfied based on the number of assumptions that are built into it. Level 0 clouds could be where the only assumtion is the that the physical machines will support the virtual images. Level 6 could be that virtual servers and resources can be cloned by template to act as expansion nodes to meet growing demand. Does this cross over into other scaling models? Yes. So what? It doesn't have to be unique in every aspect it merely has to be consistent for effective use.

When we talk about clouds, we tend to think of the usual enterprise with servers centralized in data centers or in server rooms. At least, I do. But why does

it have to be so? Any IT shop will have many more computers than what is in the server farm. With hardware technology accelerating, as always, even desktop machines are capable of multiprocessor computing and doubling as servers.

Cloud offers the ability to do more than web commerce. The concept of cloud can have broad implications for all kinds of parallel processing needs. Right now, there are a number of organizations from SETI to large medical research firms that use volunteers on the internet to help compute through massive computational workloads. The ability to do that on a wider scale is limited by the need to deliver more sophisticated or even proprietary software on the member systems.

What if workstations could be conscribed to be part of a cloud? When the workstation owner is not using it, the entire machine could be repurposed for another need. Then during work hours, the owner's image could be restored. Private owners could even lease their processing time and make some extra money or earn credit of some kind.

Right now I am surrounded by several multicore processor based systems. Any one of them could power a web presence for a small business. All of them could power the website for a medium business. If I maintained a small cloud using the computers of my neighbors, I could possibly lease powerful computing cycles to render the next animated movie or to compute fractal geometry calculations for climate models. If I operated between 9PM and 6AM I could deliver more than a day's worth of computing gain. What would that be worth?

Clouds form known patterns of shape, consistency and color. These patterns have formal names too: cumulus, stratus, nimbus, etc. But there are also the patterns that are only in the eyes of the imaginative: a dragon, or a face, or Aunt Betty being chased by a fire-breathing turtle.

Cloud computing implementations are composed of common elements such as network servers, enterprise software, routers, etc. There will be common configurations, however, the power of the cloud comes from the idea that capacity, software, storage, etc. are delivered on demand as a service. So despite the fixed configuration that is really the connected inventory, the shapes of clouds are indeed malleable. So what shapes will we see in these clouds?

One of the most widely used examples of a cloud benefit is the greeting card company that has flat business through the year except for specific holiday peaks. The cloud allows that company to expand their capacity for those peaks only, saving them money. In this example, the cloud is hosted by a third party provider.

But what about that nebulous provider? Such a company will still have to manage capacity and other IT services for all its customers. It has the same issues that any IT shop would have. Finite resources that have to handle all the demand. The cloud principle allows it to provision resource as it is needed, but then this provider will only be able to handle so many customers that have peak business around the various holidays other wise there is no gain. In fact I think that these providers will have to plan which kinds of business they can host to maximize their 'face' time.

Recently, IBM has made its presence in the cloud computing market known with a series of offerings and partnerships that position Big Blue nicely. There have been announcements of university partnerships, new cloud services and clients, and intent to deliver IBM software with Amazon Web Services. To further cloud computing and IBM’s offerings in cloud computing, teams of technical evangelists have been formed to spread the good news. I have joined one of these teams, and I’ll be here from time to time to talk about IBM’s work in the clouds.

Since we are just getting started, I figure it’s appropriate to touch on the definition and composition of cloud computing. I have read and heard hundreds of definitions for cloud computing, and they all make good points. Nearly every single definition describes a computing solution in which resources, both hardware and software, scale up and down to meet the needs of the cloud consumer. That consumer may be an end-user accessing applications that run in the cloud, or it may be the application running in the cloud that depends on the lower layer services of the cloud. Most of the existing definitions also imply some autonomic capability in which not only does the cloud scale up and down, but it does so without administrator intervention based on policies declared by the consumer. Personally, I like many of these aspects, so I have tried to combine the elements that I think are most important: Cloud computing provides computing resources in a scalable, autonomic, governable fashion. These resources may be software, application infrastructure, or physical infrastructure, and the overall solution enables IT to be delivered as a service.

Attempting to define the anatomy of cloud computing seems to elicit as many opinions as defining cloud computing. For me, the three-layer approach sums it up quite nicely. While it’s true that some cloud solutions span multiple layers, the Google App Engine comes to mind, it provides at least a reference point for the discussion of cloud products.

Application Services: This layer is comprised of what we have come to know as Software as a Service. This layer is very familiar to us (GMail, Facebook, MySpace, etc.), and it is equally familiar with enterprise consumers (WebSphere sMash on EC2, Salesforce, Sugar CRM, etc.).

Platform Services: The platform services layer is made up of different services that support applications. This may include middleware, connectivity, data, and messaging services. Offerings, such as WebSphere Application Server Virtual Images, SimpleDB on AWS, and Memcache from Google are all good examples of platform services.

Looking at all three layers, it’s plain to see that starting with application services, each layer builds on the other. However, that does not mean that each layer cannot be used independently of the other. In fact, companies often construct on-ramp paths to cloud computing that start with services in only one of the layers (i.e. virtualization of hardware).

So, there's my shot at defining cloud computing! To be sure, my view of the cloud has evolved over time. The more opinions and thoughts I read, the more I challenge my own view. For that reason, I’d like to hear what you think. What is the definition and anatomy of your cloud?